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Obviously, this works only for things which were once living.It cannot be used to date volcanic rocks, for example.Radiometric dating is a method which scientists use to determine the age of various specimens, mainly inorganic matter (rocks, etc.), though there is one radiometric dating technique, radiocarbon dating, which is used to date organic specimens. Basically, scientists take advantage of a natural process by which unstable radioactive “parent” isotopes decay into stable “daughter” isotopes spontaneously over time.Uranium-238 (U238), for example, is an unstable radioactive isotope which decays into Lead-206 (Pb206) naturally over time (it goes through 13 unstable intermediate stages before it finally stabilizes into Pb206).It takes another 4,460,000,000 years for half of the remaining sample to decay into Pb206 and then another 4,460,000,000 years for half of what’s then left to decay, and so on.The time it takes for half of a sample to decay is called a “half-life.” By measuring radioactive half-lives, by measuring how much parent and daughter are present in any given specimen, and by making certain key assumptions, scientists believe they are able to accurately determine the age of a specimen. The question is what are the underlying key assumptions and how reliable are they?Anything over about 50,000 years old, should theoretically have no detectable C.That is, they take up less than would be expected and so they test older than they really are.

We will deal with carbon dating first and then with the other dating methods.The three key underlying assumptions are 1) the rate of decay of parent into daughter has remained constant throughout the unobservable past; 2) the specimen which we are examining hasn’t been contaminated in any way (that is, no parent or daughter has been added or taken away at any point during the unobservable past), and 3) we can determine how much parent and daughter were present at the beginning of the decay process – not all of the Pb206 present today necessarily came from decaying U238; Pb206 may have been part of the original constitution of the specimen.If any of these assumptions are wrong, the method cannot accurately determine the age of a specimen.While the second and third assumptions have always been a bit troublesome, especially the third assumption, which considers the original constitution of a particular specimen, the first assumption was thought to be a pretty safe bet since scientists were not able to vary the decay rates much in a lab. Carl Wieland explains, “When uranium decays to lead, a by-product of this process is the formation of helium, a very light, inert gas which readily escapes from rock.Recently, however, new research has revealed that the decay rates may have been drastically different in the unobservable past. Certain crystals called zircons, obtained from drilling into very deep granites, contain uranium which has partly decayed into lead.